Back To School!

Welcome to all our children and their families (both old and new!). I hope that you have had an enjoyable Summer break and have spent some fun time together!

In addition to our usual curriculum we will be focusing on Art and Design this term and on 29th September we will be holding a whole school Art Week; this will include an exciting two-day visit from a professional artist, Sophie Fox, (www.sophiefox.com) who will be working with the whole school on a major project.

We hope that your children enjoy the events and activities we have planned for the Autumn Term and that they continue to play a full and active part in school life.

In order to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to attend, we will again be holding two performances of our Harvest Festival.

Once again we will be collecting items for the Halstead Food Bank. Our contributions last year made an enormous difference to dozens of families in our local area. We will begin our collection on Monday 22nd September, so if you would like to make a contribution please drop them in to the main school office.

A great deal has changed on the ‘inside’ of Education – this year we have started the new National Curriculum for all
years apart from Year 2 and Year 6; these children will follow the ‘old’ curriculum because the content will correlate with the 2015 end of Key Stage tests that were already commissioned by the Government before they decided to change the curriculum.

To summarise, the new curriculum is generally more demanding of children and there is a much greater focus on English, Maths and Science. Other changes include:

In maths, children will be expected to learn more at an earlier age – for example to know their 12 times table by the age of nine.

History will take a more chronological approach than under the old curriculum.

In English, pupils will learn more Shakespeare and there will be more importance placed on spelling.

The new computing curriculum will require pupils to learn how to write code.

In science, there will be a shift towards hard facts and scientific knowledge.

From a parental perspective the changes will be relatively minor, but rest assured, we will do all we can to sustain a lively and interesting curriculum for our children.

The feedback we have received from you and our children is that everyone really likes our ‘theme’ weeks. As a result we will plan a series of special ‘theme’ weeks that I am sure everyone will enjoy.